1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to search engine query logs, and in particular, to the determining of relationships between queries in search engine query logs.
2. Background Art
A search engine is an information retrieval system used to locate documents and other information stored on a computer system. Search engines are useful at reducing an amount of time required to find information. One well known type of search engine is a Web search engine which searches for documents, such as web pages, on the “World Wide Web.” Online services such as LexisNexis™ and Westlaw™ also enable users to search for documents provided by their respective services, including articles and court opinions. Further types of search engines include personal search engines, mobile search engines, and enterprise search engines that search on intranets, among others.
To perform a search, a user of a search engine supplies a query to the search engine. The query contains one or more words/terms, such as “hazardous waste” or “country music.” The terms of the query are typically selected by the user in an attempt to find particular information of interest to the user. The search engine returns a list of documents relevant to the query. In a Web-based search, the search engine typically returns a list of uniform resource locator (URL) addresses for the relevant documents.
If the scope of the search resulting from a query is large, the returned list of documents may include thousands or even millions of documents. In situations where a large number of documents are returned by a search, documents of interest to the user may not appear near the top of the returned list, making it difficult for the user to locate the documents of interest among all the other documents. In such a case, the user may attempt another search using a revised query. In other situations, the returned list may not include information of interest to the user. Again, in such a case, the user may attempt another search using different query terms. The user may continue to input different queries into the search engine in further attempts to hone in on the documents of interest to the user.
Thus, searching for information by entering query terms into a search engine can be challenging. Finding the right combination of query terms to find documents of interest can be difficult and time consuming. Therefore, what is needed are ways of performing more efficient searches for information using search engines, including ways of more efficiently determining revised query terms that will aid users in honing in on documents of interest during a search.